Former UT President John Petersen has died

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Dr. John Petersen, who served as University of Tennessee system president from 2004 to 2009, has died. Petersen had also served as executive vice president and provost at the University of Connecticut and acted as dean of the College of Science and professor of chemistry at Wayne State University.

He was 77 and died at home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, according to an obituary from Walker’s Funeral Home.

Petersen was named UT president in April of 2004. He was selected in an unorthodox fashion during an open search process.

That process saw 47 candidates publicly state their candidacy and multiple public interviews from the finalists. Petersen’s tenure didn’t just have a unique beginning; the presidency is described by UT’s website as “one of friction with the Knoxville campus.”

Specifically, Petersen saw controversy in the form of a vote of no confidence over his handling of a campus-wide email and information technology breakdown.

Though dissatisfaction between Petersen and the Knoxville campus was a hallmark of his presidency, he also saw several notable accomplishments, like the opening of the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a record $65 million NSF grant that put UT and ORNL at the forefront of supercomputing.

“Our heartfelt condolences go to his family and friends,” current UT President Randy Boyd said in a statement.

Petersen earned his PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1975. Prior to that, he earned a BS in chemistry from California State in 1970.